The Marvels is aching—just dying—to be something other than a superhero movie.
These films are by their very nature generic: not just in the sense that they are dull and formulaic, which they often are, but in a stricter sense: they are all one genus. They share certain uniform characteristics that define their substance. To lose these characteristics would be to become something else entirely. No matter how much that koala resembles a bear, it’s just not one.
On the flip side, no matter how much weird whimsy the director crammed into every available corner of the plot, The Marvels is still, basically, a Marvel movie, much to its own chagrin. It labors under the weight of set pieces. It chafes at the need for fights. It frets over its insane-inane plotline. Meanwhile, it revels in every moment that can be spent on character, and pays out big time when allowed to do that.
It has been a while since I’ve come away from a Marvel movie conclusively liking the characters. No, scratch that. It’s been a while since I’ve come away from a Marvel movie remembering the characters. Marvel movies vary in quality, but over the years they have gotten more formulaic rather than less, even as Feige, D’Esposito, and Co. have gone out of their way to hire new talent. Nia DaCosta, the 35-year-old director, clearly won a creative fight here other talented filmmakers like Chloe Zhao and Peyton Reed lost: the fight to Write. DaCosta is credited as one of three writers on The Marvels. This could mean nothing, given the profusion of scribes and Pharisees who namelessly consult on every one of the studio’s projects; yet, the characterization here finds some purchase that suggests a coherent overall hand. It’s got a lot more going for it than, say, The Eternals, which slides off the metaphorical cliff of creative mediocrity, into the allegorical chasm of tedium, to smash on the rocks of my logistical planning for next week’s shopping trip because damn that movie was intolerable. The lesson for Marvel should be clear: it’s not enough to just hire outside talent. You have to let them move it, move it.
Literally, in the case of The Marvels, which busts out a dance sequence worthy of King Julien at a key moment, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The Marvels is a surprisingly direct sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, a film I criticized for having no handle on its titular character. In that mess, Carol Danvers was written as an angry amnesiac whose feminist assertiveness clashed badly with everything the character should have been in terms of story. In most scenes she was a head-tossing stoic; then at bizarre moments she would suddenly grow a sense of humor like a third arm, throwing out Tony-Stark-esque quips at friend and enemy alike with a randomness suggestive of added reshoots. Moreover, directors could never quite bring themselves to find any kind of fault with her. She had no internal struggle, and thus, no arc.
The Carol Danvers we meet at the beginning of this film instantly makes more sense as a character. Eternally mission-focused while wandering through the universe, she is solitary by nature, uncomfortable with both praise and criticism. Her hard edge is still there, but DaCosta seems to have found a happy mix of haughtiness and guilelessness. Writing fixes a lot. Brie Larson—who cannot be blamed for the issues of Captain Marvel—slips into the new-old role and shows off a talent for subtle comedy we’ve previously seen….outside of her Marvel work. Few actors in Hollywood have such a gift for side-eye. DaCosta leverages everything Larson is good at, including this. The same can be said for Iman Vellani, who is truly the second lead of The Marvels, despite being third-billed. Her role as the overenthusiastic kid should be irritating as hell, as it is in so many of these movies, but Kamala Khan works as a character in a way that breaks out of that cliche—and crucially, Larson and Vellani are given space to play off each other. Not just at the beginning, either, but throughout the movie.
And then there’s Teyonah Parris, who is an okay actress saddled with a terribly-written role.
The three-hander (why not? Tons of aliens in this movie) kicks off with the discovery that holes are being punched in space-time by a dastardly villain. Who, you may ask? I might ask the same thing. I had to go to IMDb to figure out the character’s name, because this villain is truly impossible to pay attention to. Her name is Dar-Benn, apparently, and she walks about in a cloud of cliches so dense you almost can’t see her. The moment she walks offscreen you forget that she exists—because, in a sense, she doesn’t. She is in the MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT LLC part of the movie, one of those generic hallmarks so obligatory to the product being sold; but as far as story, she’s about as important as the ugly CGI. It’s no fault of this actress (Zawe Ashton, which sounds like a handbag maker), but this film just isn’t interested in having a supervillain. The Darn-Benn scenes are perfunctory. The Dar-Benn action sequences are overwhelmingly focused on the three heroines.
Her villain plan is preposterous, so evil and so stupid that it doesn’t register (despite a late revelation that its based on personal beef with Carol). In fact, the ludicrous enormity of the plan almost feels on purpose. “The end of the entire universe or something” would be a good statement of what our heroes must prevent.
There’s an obstacle, however: the superpowers of the three heroes have become “entangled.” If there was ever any explanation, I missed it, but its hard to complain when a superhero movie finds a new thing to try—and has this much fun with it.
The “entanglement” basically means that sometimes when Carol, Kamala, or Monica use their superpowers, they magically switch places with each other, no mater where they are in the universe, leading to hijinks. The movie never explains why this only happens sometimes, and, frustratingly, they solve it just as we get to the climax clearly for narrative convenience, but it’s a good gag all the same. In the highlight sequence of the first act, we see Monica Rambeau and Carol repeatedly try to engage the new threat, only to find themselves back in Kamala’s living room and under the eyes of her increasingly bewildered family. In a refreshing turn from narrative convention, Kamala has a healthy intact family who never turn on her. They also provide deadpan against the wackiness of the superheroes.
Eventually, it becomes clear that Kamala—Carol’s wildly enthusiastic fangirl—must go with them so they won’t get transported far away at odd moments, and so the trio are off to pursue Dar-Benn. At this point, the film pulls out the obligatory Flashback to Critical Moment of Failure, and I become very confused. Seemingly, Captain Marvel upset the political situation enough on the Kree homeworld that a civil war was triggered, which destroyed the planet’s ecosystem. Hence, Carol is sorta/kinda/maybe/not really the impetus for Dar-Benn to steal the natural resources from other planets by opening portals with her Scary Staff of Evil.
Sidebar: This staff—which is really important to the plot—is woefully under-designed, as is most of the movie. Give any art school student crayons and ten minutes and they could come up with something vastly more interesting than the prop the movie went with. Visual Design used to be a strength of Marvel’s. Remember the dozens of armors in Iron Man 3? Remember Asgard? But nothing in this film looks intentional, considered, or even cool—this movie suffers from Transformertosis, offering nothing to grab onto visually. Ships, buildings, weapons, and even costumes are goopy CGI that make zero impression. I cannot recall what anything looks like in this movie—even though I’ve seen hours upon hours of it. I disliked this non-aesthetic when the movie was called Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I disliked it when the movie was called Thor: Ragnarok. I am not going to defend Loki as a great TV show, but you have to hand it to them that they recognized the need for a different look. Loki’s world feels lovingly crafted where The Marvels feels spat off an assembly line.
You can almost hear the studio note: “can we make it personal for Captain Marvel? But like, without making her the bad guy, but also she still needs to feel guilty about it.” Modern blockbuster filmmaking at work.
In the same vein, Monica has some very shallow beef with Carol. Monica was a child in 1996 when Carol left Earth. Carol, presumably due to her energy powers, has barely aged, but Monica is now in her thirties, roughly the same age, and she has some angst about Carol’s absence. The best I can say about this subplot is that it’s brief. The script seems unsure of what to do with Capt. Rambeau; she feels parachuted in from the TV show in which she was introduced, and Parris cannot match the charisma of the other two leads. Despite her close personal connection to Carol, she winds up as the third wheel in the charming dynamic between awkward/cool-aunt Larson and sugarrush/starstruck Vellani.
Forunately—for both the characters within the movie and for the viewing audience—Carol knows where the villain is headed. The next planet, a waterworld spectacular, reveals what The Marvels wants to be, what it should be: a great Doctor Who special. In a hilarious turn, it transpires that Danvers, at some point in righting wrongs across the galaxy, became the princess of a planet where the native language is song—singing and dancing will be mandatory. Our trio are greeted on the ground by a massive musical number and Danvers ballroom-dances with the planet’s prince while dressed like Snow White. The flamboyant citizenry operatically proclaim their love for their long-lost princess. In front of the TV, I cackle with glee.
If you, like me, are weary of the endless insincere snark of Taika Waititi’s Thor movies, this scene is the antidote; as much as it is consciously silly, for a transcendent moment, the movie hits a note of sincere silliness akin to The Princess Bride. In a perhaps-unintentional encapsulation of the difference between what The Marvels’ is and what it wants to be, Rambeau makes a snarky crack about fan-fiction as they watch Danvers dance with the prince. Kamala, unfazed, replies, “I am feeling a lot of feelings right now!” with so much joy that Rambeau looks petty. For a moment, Rambeau is the Malvolio, pushing the studio’s rigid demands uphill against the tide of fun, while Kamala and Carol, unencumbered by expectations, tear up the dancefloor like the goofball heroes they should be.
The movie never hits this high again. The inevitable space battle with many flashing colors occurs, with the fun twist that Nick Fury (rarely has Sam Jackson given such a perfunctory performance) must rescue all the people on this odd space station. Just like with the water planet, the plot point is stupid, but the way the movie gets there is quite amusing—though this is decidedly a subplot and not a well-developed one. If completely CGI cats bother you, this may not be the third act set piece for you.
Kamala, Carol, and Monica face off with the evil villain lady in a scene that has become so basic to these movies that I had the strange experience of anticipating not just the beats, not just the lines, but even the choreography. Throughout, the action fails to thrill, but boy does it fail to thrill in the third act. It is well known in Hollywood that Marvel action set pieces are pre-visualized before the movies are even written, and you feel that. This third act is like a frozen pizza: okay when it comes in hot, worse after a few minutes, really distasteful if its allowed to hang around.
Fortunately, it doesn’t for long. The Marvels is listed at an hour forty-five, but credits roll at 93 minutes after a brief postlude with Carol and Kamala. DaCosta does get the last word, leaving us with the chemistry that worked, after all the sound and Fury (sic) nearly drowned it out. The final statement seems to be: “here’s the heart I know you want, audience. Hope it came through.”
It does, and it doesn’t. In the duel of Spectacle vs. Character, the latter sweeps the board, raising the question of whether this movie is better sans-branding. If this didn’t have to be a Marvel project, would it work better? I want to believe so, but I’m just speculating; it fundamentally is a Marvel project, with style and trimmings that tease something better. As hard as it tries to be wacky and heartfelt, The Marvels doesn’t seem to have enough of a core to stand without the skeleton of its genre to support it—Doctor Who can be amazing, but how often is it coherent? At its best moments, The Marvels is a goofball cosmic voyage more sincere than anything this studio does these days—but the worst of it is messy and slapdash in a way the best Marvel movies avoid. There’s no shaking off the studio—these movies probably do work better when they color as creatively as possible inside the lines. But I root for every attempt.